Me: “Well, I would expect you to take it and hand it to loss prevention or something? I don’t think many would be happy to buy something that’s been opened and consumed already.”

(The worker reluctantly took it and I got back to my shopping. Not five minutes later, however, I noticed him putting it back out. He scurried off when he noticed me. I decided to just buy it and get rid of it on my own, and send a strongly worded letter to their complaints department. I don’t know if anything came of it, as I got no reply. I don’t shop there anymore.)

(It is summer and I am sitting in a café. I love iced coffee. They don’t have it on the menu, but they do have coffee and ice cream. In Germany, an iced coffee is cold coffee with vanilla ice cream in it and whipped cream on top. So, I think I’ll just ask if they would make one for me. Worth a shot, right? The waitress shows up and I ask her.)

(I run a private computer store associated with a larger company. We see a lot of customers each day with issues using their cell phones. Many have changed something on the device that they were not aware of, and it requires us to scroll through a number of different settings on the device to troubleshoot. This happens while I am helping a lady who appears to be in her 60s.)

Customer: “Do you by chance have a water fountain?”

Me: “No, but will a bottle of water do?”

(I keep water in our refrigerator for personal use; I usually buy bulk packs of mini bottles. I get a bottle of water from the back room, hand it to her, and bend over to the counter to look closely at the phone settings once again. She starts drinking from the bottle, standing directly opposite me, and basically right on top of me as I check her phone. She then gets some water down the wrong pipe, and does the biggest cough and spit take you have ever seen, showering me, the counter, and her phone. I take it all in stride, clean up what I can with a roll of paper towels we keep behind the counter, and get her taken care of the best I can, and she leaves.)

Coworker: “You have got the be the most composed person I have ever seen! She was shooting water out her nose, even! If it would have been me, I would have told her I had to go home and take a shower after that!”

(I didn’t really need to hear that part. Bonus points: she never said she was sorry!)

(My motel uses cleaning chemicals to clean each room, and one day a fussy customer takes offense to it.)

Customer: “Can you tell the maids not to use those awful chemicals to clean my room? I have allergies!”

Me: “Okay, so, you don’t want your room cleaned, then?”

Customer: “No, I want it cleaned; I just don’t want those awful perfumes and stink in my room! Can you do something?!”

(I get the manager when she starts screaming, I explain, and the manager and the customer argue back and forth for a bit. She huffs off and the manager tells the housekeepers not to use chemicals to clean. Later, the customer returns, calmer.)

Customer: “The housekeepers did a good job. Tell them thank you. But it smells like feet now.”

Me: “I will.”

(A week later, the customer checked out. The housekeeper told me that the customer’s room smelled so much like dirty hair and cigarettes — we are non smoking — it was unsellable.)